The current crisis came to a head when my brother went for a routine check-up a few weeks ago. Six weeks after the previous one, his kidney function (eGFR) was found to have fallen by a further 3% to only 18%. It seems that a transplant is usually desirable when it reaches 10%, so he hasn't got far to go if it carries on deteriorating at that rate.
The first requirement for a donor is to be of the right blood group. My brother is O Pos and I knew anyway that I am O Pos as well, as it was embossed on the HM Forces ID card for 16 years (and hopefully is correct!). My wife has also volunteered and she knows she is O Pos, being a long-standing blood donor. The other didn't know and had to find out; it turns out that just one other potential donor is also O Pos, but various other siblings have been ruled out, so at present there are three of us on the list. NB I found out later that the Rhesus Negative/Positive bit is irrelevant to kidney transplants.
The next step is matching tissue types. This can be done at any hospital which would save me a 60 mile each way trip, so I'll see what happens after I have spoken to the transplant nurse on Monday
There is a lot about this process which I don't know, but I found the Kidney Research UK website to be very helpful.
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